As global migration escalates, the number of students with Swedish
as their second language entering high school in Sweden also increases.
This demographic and linguistic change in the mainstream
classroom has forced the role of language in teaching/learning to
surface. In order for society to provide all students with equal educational
opportunities, accommodation to the needs of second language
learners has become a pressing issue. The purpose of this
study is to try to understand what opportunities the teaching strategies
of a 10th grade chemistry teacher may create for second language
learners to develop their Swedish language repertoire in the
subject. The study has been conducted from the point of view of
language didactics, and a socio-cultural framework has been used
to provide a theoretical perspective. Of fundamental importance is
the notion that language is the primary mediating tool in learning;
that learning is situated; that the situated learning is socially constructed.
Furthermore, the concepts of vygotskian origin, scientific
and everyday language/scientific and everyday concepts are part of
the theoretical perspective along with scaffolding, second language
development, language repertoire, and chemistry teaching.
The empiric material was collected by observations and video and
audio recordings of 31 lessons in one class with one teacher. The
vast majority of the students had Swedish as their second lan-guage
and half of them had, at the time of the study, been in Sweden four
years or less. This primary source material has been transferred into
secondary material by way of transcription. The analyses sought
to answer three questions regarding 1) the teacher’s general didactic
and subject related didactic strategies; 2) the teacher’s language didactic strategies in the whole-class teacher talk; 3) the consequences
for the opportunities this may afford the students to develop a
language repertoire in the subject. A variety of theoretical concepts
has been applied in the process of analysis: cooperation and drive;
Johnstone’s triangle; interactivity, a dialogic or authoritative voice,
and directness. Consequences of the teacher’s strategies are discussed
in terms of positions allowing for receptive or productive language
use, scaffolding and meta-skills. The study is concluded by the
presentation of a didactic approach to an oscillating shift of focus
on the subject matter and on how this subject matter is linguistically
constructed.